Recently, the semiconductor industry has developed to an ultra-fine technique having a pattern of several to several tens nanometer size. Such ultra-fine technique essentially needs effective lithographic techniques.
The typical lithographic technique includes providing a material layer on a semiconductor substrate; coating a photoresist layer thereon; exposing and developing the same to provide a photoresist pattern; and etching the material layer using the photoresist pattern as a mask.
Nowadays, according to small-sizing the pattern to be formed, it is difficult to provide a fine pattern having an excellent profile by only above-mentioned typical lithographic technique. Accordingly, a photoresist underlayer, called a hardmask layer, may be formed between the material layer and the photoresist layer to provide a fine pattern.
The hardmask layer plays a role of an intermediate layer for transferring the fine pattern of photoresist to the material layer through the selective etching process. Accordingly, the hardmask layer requires to have characteristics such as heat resistance, etch resistance, or the like to be tolerated during the multiple etching processes.
In addition, according to widening the application range of hardmask layer, the hardmask layer may be formed on a predetermined pattern by the spin-on coating method. In this case, the gap-fill characteristics of filling the hardmask composition in gap between patterns and the planarization characteristics are also required.